Translation look-aside buffers (TLBs) provide a cache-like mechanism useful for increasing the efficiency of virtual-to-physical address translations in processors. By caching recently used translations, some overhead associated with repeated virtual-to-physical address translation may be avoided.
For an operating system running multiple processes, virtual machines associated with the various processes may suffer from “TLB pollution.” TLB pollution occurs due to context switches where the TLB entries from an executing process replace TLB entries from a previously executing process. When the previously executing process becomes active again, many address translations may have to be repeated because of TLB pollution.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a need in the art for alternate methods and apparatus associated with translation look-aside buffers.